Thursday, July 8, 2010

Not to Be Negative or Anything

I would much rather be talking about how great the Angels are doing; about the hot bats, the sharp offense and the lights-out pitching. But that seems to be descriptive of the Angels in an alternate universe. The real Angels are like the walking dead right now and we're all watching Texas (with not a little bit of help from Vladdy) run away with the AL West. It's a sad, sad sight. (We're currently listening to the Angels and they're about to lose their 4th straight game in a 4-game series to the White Sox after having lost 2 of 3 to Kansas City. Did I say it was sad? I'm wrong; it's depressing!

So, instead of singing the praises of the team I have to find something to complain about. But I don't want to take it out on the players just yet, so I'll focus on the announcing. I never thought that we could have a worse TV caller than Rex Hudler, but we do—at least when it comes to calling home runs. And home runs are about all we get to hear the TV guys call while we watch the "highlights" of the games on mlb.com. (We do get the audio feed, love Terry Smith and can put up with José Mota.) Victor Rojas gets to call the home runs for TV and man is it embarrassing. Here's a list of the 4 worst. You tell me if this makes you happy that your team just hit a home run.

After a 3-run home run by Torii Hunter:

"Torii Hunter with a 3-run JIMMY JACK!"


After a lead off, opposite field home run by Howie Kendrick:

"Howie Kendrick with a lead-off OPPO-TACO!"


After any home run by Kendry Morales (may he heal miraculously):

"A BIG FLY for the CUBAN MISSILE!"


And, the most recent display of baseball-calling idiocy, after a grand slam by Hideki Matsui:

"Godzilla goes BOOM!"

Seriously. Shut up already! Can you imagine Vin Scully or Jon Miller saying these things? Actually, it must be that the players are tired of hearing this nonsense and have stopped hitting home runs to silence the madness. So, Victor, for the sake of the team, please just call it a home run and leave at that. For the sake of the team and for the sake of our sanity.

3 comments:

Gypmar said...

Yikes.

Sam said...

But now they're winning! They just needed an All-Star break, and a series against the pathetic Mariners.

The worst thing about the "3-run Jimmy Jack" call is that a Jimmy Jack refers to a 3-run homer. Somebody pointed that out to me recently and ... it may have been you. So if it was, sorry for recycling your gripe!

eric O said...

Yep, Sam, they're winning and it's pretty nice. May all my complaining fade into the background as they take over the AL West.

I didn't know that the phrase was redundant. That makes it worse. And just in case the calls themselves aren't bad enough, there are facebook pages for people who love them and want to say so. Blech!

In the end, I guess I can just be glad that we don't have that White Sox guy calling our home runs. He says something like, "Konerko. High. Deep! (Several other normal-to-really-dumb things.) You can putitonthe BOOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRD! YES!"